Panel Statement
Chair Person: Joseph DeLappe
Discussant: Rita Raley Presenters: Bernadette Buckley, Wafaa Bilal & Hasan Elahi
This panel will provide an opportunity for the examination of politically motivated, media based practices as we move into the second decade after the 9/11 attacks and the resulting War on Terror. The individuals involved in this panel have been instrumental in defining the use and dissemination of tactical media practices that have resonated widely in the cultural sphere by confronting issues of war, memory, terrorism and surveillance. The panel provides a crucial and timely context for these creative practitioners and noted scholars to discuss the efficacy of such ongoing efforts of engagement in works that seek to intervene in our contemporary political context. This will be an opportunity for critical discourse by these panelists and the panel attendees to consider the evolution and adaptation of these ideas in light of the challenges to sustaining a level of urgency in such politically activist creative practice – as conflict, terror and fear have come to typify the status quo.
- Joseph DeLappe is a Professor of the Department of Art at the University of Nevada, USA, where he directs the Digital Media program. Working with electronic and new media since 1983, his work in online gaming performance and electromechanical installation have been shown throughout the United States and abroad – including exhibitions and performances in Australia, the United Kingdom, China, Germany, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands and Canada. In 2006 he began the project dead-in-iraq, to type consecutively, all names of America’s military casualties from the war in Iraq into the America’s Army first person shooter online recruiting game. He also directs the iraqimemorial.org project, an ongoing web based exhibition and open call for proposed memorials to the many thousand of civilian casualties from the war in Iraq. He has lectured throughout the world regarding his work, including most recently at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. He has been interviewed on CNN, NPR, CBC, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and on The Rachel Maddow Show on Air America Radio. His works have been featured in the New York Times, The Australian Morning Herald, Artweek, Art in American and in the 2010 book from Routledge entitled Joystick Soldiers: The Politics of Play in Military Video Game.
- Rita Raley is Associate Professor of English, with courtesy appointments in Film and Media Studies, Comparative Literature, and Global Studies, at University California, Santa Barbara, USA. Her primary research interests lie at the intersection of digital media and humanist inquiry, with a particular emphasis on cultural critique, artistic practices, and language (codework, machine translation, electronic literature, and electronic English). Her book, Tactical Media, a study of new media art in relation to neoliberal globalization, has been published by the University of Minnesota Press in its Electronic Mediations series. Her most recent publications include the co-edited Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 2, as well as articles on poetic and narratological uses of mobile and locative media and text-based media arts installations. In addition to ongoing research on digital poetics and interventionist media arts practices, she continues work on Global English and the Academy, excerpts of which have been published in The Yale Journal of Criticism and Diaspora. In the English department at UCSB, she currently directs the Transcriptions Center (original website) and co-directs the Literature and Culture of Information Specialization. She has had fellowship appointments at the National Humanities Center and UCLA, as part of the Mellon-funded project on the Digital Humanities, and has taught at Rice and the University of Minnesota.